Magpie Hall (21 page)

Excited, I told Charlie of my theory.

‘Jesus, you’ve got a good imagination,’ he said.

The caves lay in the shadow of the limestone cliffs. We tied the horses up, giving them enough headroom to graze.

‘Do you remember coming here?’ I asked Charlie.

‘I do. Grandpa said there used to be moa in this valley. I was
convinced I would find one still alive. I was really disappointed when we had to go back and I still hadn’t found one.’

‘What would you have done with it? Killed it with your slingshot, probably.’

‘Yeah, all right. You’re never going to let me forget that magpie, are you?’

‘Well, it was a terrible thing to do. But it set me on the taxidermy path, so I suppose I should thank you.’

‘You’re welcome.’ He sat down on a rock and lit a cigarette. ‘I didn’t tell you that I used to come here when I wasn’t supposed to, with some of the farm kids. We used to smoke here.’ He looked at the end of his cigarette. ‘Some things don’t change, I guess.’

‘I’m not at all surprised.’

‘Yeah, well, you and Grandpa were always getting into a huddle over some dead animal. He was too busy to even notice. We used to ride up here and be back at the end of the day and nobody even asked me where I’d been.’

‘I’m sorry.’

He shrugged. ‘Don’t be. I liked it. The Maori kids told me there’re rock drawings in these caves, done by their ancestors. We tried to move some of the rocks so we could get into the blocked one, but there were just too many of them. I think they used to be burial caves. They said they were tapu, so we were too scared to dig very deep.’

I was glad now that the cave was inaccessible. I liked the thought of the drawings behind the rock slide being safe from the light and from prying eyes. And if they really were burial caves, I didn’t want to disturb whatever was within. I walked a little way into the shallow cavern. It was quiet inside, with only the muffled sound of dripping water and the occasional whistle of the wind catching in the crevices.

‘Dora!’ I shouted, but there was no answer, only the wind humming to me from outside.

It was late afternoon by the time we got back to the stables, and grey clouds had rolled across the sky to meet us. I felt exhausted, and my legs trembled as I walked around Jimmy, taking off his tack and stowing it away. I gave him a cursory brush, then led him back to the paddock. He lingered as though reluctant to leave, but once Blossom was beside him, they lay down to roll in the dirt. Charlie and I stood watching them, enjoying the moment, before walking around the side of the house.

It wasn’t until we were right by the kitchen door that we saw it. I noticed the magpie first, wings splayed in a mockery of flight, head limp on the stalk of its neck. A huge nail had been pounded through its body, right where its tiny heart would be. Blood ran down the white paint, smeared in places, as though the job had been done hastily. I turned to look at Charlie, just in time to see his face as he registered what was in front of him. He stepped back and raised an arm, as if to protect himself.

Moments later I sat crying at the kitchen table, while Charlie sat beside me, shaken but trying to comfort me.

‘What have we done to deserve this?’ I asked him. Despite my tears, I felt oddly distant from the whole situation. A dead animal nailed to the door was too sinister to be real, the kind of joke Charlie would have played on me when he was a boy. I told him about the possum on the doorstep, how it had appeared just after I had seen the face at the window and how I had talked myself into believing it benign.

‘Why didn’t you tell me? Jesus, we should have called the police ages ago.’

‘Because I didn’t know if it was a threat or not. I thought maybe someone had left it there for me as a gift.’

‘What kind of a gift?’

‘A project, taxidermy. Sam brought me a rabbit the other day and I’ve already skinned it.’

‘You think Sam did this? That bastard.’ He stood up. ‘He’ll get fired for this.’

‘I don’t know.’ I really didn’t. Sam seemed the most likely candidate. I’d rejected him and he’d been angry, but I didn’t know whether he was capable of something like this.

‘I’ll call Josh. He’ll get him sorted out.’

Resigned, I followed Charlie through to the living room, where the old dial phone perched on a side table. I couldn’t avoid the farm manager forever. I sat down on the old familiar couch and pulled the rug over my knees. As I listened to the laboured sound of every number Charlie dialled, I realised there was someone standing in the garden, looking at us. He stood straight and block-shouldered, his arms by his sides, no expression on his face, but his head tilted at such an angle that his thick brows nearly obscured his eyes. He saw me looking at him, but he neither acknowledged me nor changed his position.

‘Do you … Charlie, do you see who’s outside?’ I had to know if I was imagining things, yet again.

Charlie replaced the receiver with a clunk. ‘I see him all right. Guess there’s no need to call him now.’

Henry

Tiny lizards that curl inside his hand like ribbons. Strange, flightless birds with withered wings: the cheeky and bold weka, the shy nocturnal kiwi. The blue-feathered, red-footed swamp hen, or pukeko, that flicked its tail in fright, showing him its white underfeathers before he shot it, and warned the other birds away. Frilly-legged centipedes, and the magnificent giant weta, with its barbed, kicking legs and its feelers stretching many times longer than its own body; it put up a good fight but he got it in the end without damaging it, even though the jar was scarcely big enough to poison it. New Zealand’s only native mammal, a mouse-faced bat, proved harder to mount than he had anticipated, but he has done a nice job on making it look fierce, despite its size.

And the huia.

Everything else he packs away, ready to be shipped elsewhere, but the huia he holds in his arms for the last few hours of his journey. He wants to present it to Dora. For it to be the first thing she sees. For her to know that it was all worthwhile, this separation.

A light drizzle falls as the carriage moves up the driveway. Magpie Hall looms pleasingly in the landscape. He never tires of the view of the house as the road crests a small hill and turns a corner, veering away from the river, which is running faster and fatter than usual; it must have been raining while he was away.

He leaps down, the huia safe in his arms.

Dora! he calls, looking up.

Her face appears at the window for a moment, like a ghost, then is gone. She meets him at the bottom of the stairs and he only just has time to put the huia on a side table before she throws herself at him.

Let me look at you, he says. He tries to pull her arms loose from around his neck, but she clings to him like a leech. Her face is hot against his neck, her breath moist. He wants to carry her upstairs. Instead he takes a step back, holding her wrists, and looks at her. She will not return the gaze, however. He is shocked by what he sees: she has lost weight, and her hair is limp, with grease at the roots and a smattering of snowy dandruff. Her eyes are red, as though she has been crying for a week.

Whatever is the matter? he asks, catching her again with his arms as she begins to sob.

She doesn’t answer him. He pulls her into the parlour and lowers her into an armchair, where she sits clutching her stomach and squeezing the handkerchief he has given her.

He sits in a hard chair beside her, waiting.

She shakes her head. Nothing is the matter, she says. I just missed you, that is all. She blushes, as though this admission embarrasses her.

He feels a little embarrassed himself.

That can’t be it, he says. There must be something more.

She bristles. Do you think me foolish? All that time, and only one letter from you? Did you think of me at all?

He springs up and looks down at her. Her eyes widen and she bites her lip. His shoulders begin to shake. He must leave the room, get away from her: the only way to stop his body convulsing is to ball the force inside him and throw it at something. Or someone.

In the entrance hall he picks up the huia. He looks at it, at his hands holding it, trembling and clenching, and it takes all his strength to put the magnificent bird back on the table and smash his fist into the wall above it.

I’m sorry, says Dora as she bandages his hand. His knuckles are shiny and inflated, the cuts painful. Only himself to blame.

I wasn’t angry with you, she continues. I
did
miss you. I don’t know what has got into me. I feel better now that you’re home, that’s all. She squeezes his good hand, smiles, but still the sadness beneath the skin is palpable.

He won’t ask her. She will tell him in her time, if that is what she wants.

For now, his own anger has floated away. As usual, he can’t even remember what it felt like when it was inside him; he is only glad that he has expelled it. Glad, too, that it is his own body that is damaged, not the huia’s or, God forbid, Dora’s.

They sit in his room. The fire has been lit and, outside, the dim light is failing further as the day subsides. The green wood crackles and smokes, and he can feel it begin to needle at his eyes, but still,
it is comforting. Dora convinced him to come upstairs, to lie down after his journey, and for a moment he was seduced by the idea of a soft bed and oblivion. But now he is too excited about showing her the prize.

She lights the lamp to finish her job, and pulls his hand close to her face to inspect the work.

Yes, that should hold, she says.

Come with me. He stands and takes her hand, pulls her down the stairs. He avoids looking at the dented wallpaper — his hand sustained most of the damage — and presents her with the huia.

At first she looks unsure what to do with it, but then her face begins to glow, and some warmth returns to her eyes.

You found one, she whispers.

For you, he says.

For me, she repeats. She stares at the bird, at its fine curved beak, shaped for nectar-drinking, its deep black feathers. The tail, dipped in bright white paint. It perches on a totara branch, which is in turn attached to a wooden stand, and this is how she holds it, as if too scared to touch the bird itself.

Tell me, she says. Tell me everything.

And so they move into the drawing room, and in front of the fire he tells her the story of its capture. Of how he searched for days for the bird, growing more and more despondent. His guide woke him early one morning with a hand over his mouth, bidding him to be quiet and pointing up into the dense bush, where the huia hopped from branch to branch, hunting insects and seemingly oblivious to the human presence below. But perhaps it was merely unafraid.

Dora, he tells her, I longed to be there a hundred years earlier, when that bush would have been alive with their calls, before they were hunted to near extinction. I would have even found them in the
South Island, but no longer. They are a dying breed. You hold one of the last of the huia in your hands. A female — see the long beak? The males have shorter beaks. But I only wanted one. Just one.

His voice trails away as he relives the moment in his mind. The way he rose quickly and stealthily, reaching for his gun, which he had cleaned and loaded the night before. The way he stalked it, making himself as light as a bubble so not a twig crackled underfoot. He willed his whole body to float over the earth, following the huia’s path through the bush. And finally, he brought the gun to his eye. He knew he would have only one shot, and he took it.

It was perfect, he says after he has related this to Dora. The shot was so fine there was hardly any blood. And as you can see, the specimen is perfect.

It
is
perfect, she says.

Later, they lie in bed and watch the light from a single candle dance in a draught. He knows that the gift of the huia pleased her, but there remains a stillness about her, as if any youthfulness she had has been tempered by his absence. He knows she wants to say something to him by the way she keeps sighing, turning to look at him, then turning over again when he meets her gaze.

Finally he props himself on his elbow and takes her chin gently in his fingers.

There is something on your mind, he says.

She pauses before speaking, and when she does her eyes have a nakedness about them that has been hidden since his arrival.

I would like — she begins. No, I
need
, to go back to see McDonald. Soon. Can we do that?

But of course. Do you have something in mind?

My back. It feels empty. I need something there, something … splendid.

He doesn’t ask her for an explanation, for he knows. He has been through it all himself, felt a hunger that drove him into London just when his father needed him for some business, that compelled him to cover the bare skin on his left bicep.

I will write to him tomorrow, says Henry, and tell him to prepare for our arrival.

Boldly, they have come in the morning this time. By day, the port’s buildings show their paint cracked and crusted by salt; the alleyways are damp with puddles of urine from last night’s revelry. All activity, however, is focused on the wharves and the ships — from the elevated town streets they can see the dwarfed figures of men scampering over the cargo, hauling it from ship to dock and dock to ship.

McDonald sits bleary-eyed in his shop, waiting for them in a cloud of tobacco smoke. The room smells of alcohol, but Henry knows now to trust that the tattooer is not drunk. McDonald moves stiffly as he leads them through to the back room, muttering about the hour.

You knew we were coming at this time, said Henry, so please close your mouth, sir. It is not our fault if you did not show some restraint last evening.

McDonald chuckles and aims some saliva into the nearby spittoon.

Right you are, sir, he replies. And what do we have here?

Henry puts the box he has been carrying on a nearby table.

It is very precious to us and we have transported it safely thus far, so please be careful with it. He lifts the huia out and places it reverently beside the box.

McDonald lets out a long, low whistle.

That’s quite some tweeter! What do you call it then?

It is the huia. From the North Island. I would like you to sketch a design from it and to tattoo Mrs Summers’ back. Quite large, that is why we have arrived early.

The thick eyebrows shoot up. Her back is it now? But he says no more, as if suddenly aware it would not be his place to comment.

Beside him, Dora fidgets with her purse and walks tight circles around the room. Her breathing is too fast; Henry is worried that she will make herself faint.

Sit down, he says, too brusquely, and she stops pacing to look at him, startled.

He softens his voice and guides her to a chair. You need to relax or it will only hurt more, he says. Then he addresses McDonald. Where is your boy? Can’t you get us some tea? What do we pay you for?

He thinks of the expensive teaset he bought for the establishment, wonders if it remains pristine or has been chipped or broken, or worse, if it is filthy.

He’ll be here soon enough, says McDonald as he examines the bird from every angle, trying to find the best place to start his sketching.

Henry doesn’t know why he is so nervous. It is not that he disapproves of the work Dora is about to undergo, but he worries for her. She has been so lacklustre; he is concerned she might regret the decision when it is over, or even that she will be left with a half-finished bird on her back for the rest of her life.

If the tattoo does make her happier, as she seems to think, when will the desire to cover her body in ink end?
Where
will it end? Her wrists? Her neck? Her face? Will she be happy only when she has a new tattoo to admire?

But he loves her body the way it is. The tattooing doesn’t diminish her beauty; it enhances it. All the more because he is the only person
on earth, apart from McDonald, who is able to gaze upon it. For all his fears, it makes him feel as though she belongs to him — the most exquisite curiosity in the world. None of the other collectors has a specimen quite like Dora.